Homily for the Sunday After the Elevation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

Galatians 2:16-20; Mark 8:34-9:1

    As we continue to celebrate the Elevation of the Holy Cross, we must remain on guard against the temptation of thinking that all our Lord’s Cross requires of us are mouthing pious words and cultivating warm feelings.  Through His Self-Offering on the Cross, Christ has conquered death and brought salvation to the world.  For us to share personally in His great victory, we must take up our own crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Him each day of our lives.  If we refuse to do so, we will show that we are ashamed of our Lord and want no part in Him or His Kingdom. We will show that we prefer to continue in the old ways of death rather than to enter by His grace into eternal life.    

            Peter was in precisely such a state when he tried to explain to Christ that dying on the Cross had nothing to do with being the Messiah.  That is when the Lord famously said, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”  That is the context for today’s gospel passage as Christ teaches that following Him is not a way to gain anything at all according to the standards of this world, but a calling to offer ourselves without reservation, no matter the cost.  

            The calling to take up our crosses stands in stark contrast to the persistent temptation to try to use religion to exalt ourselves in our own minds.  Some try to use the Cross to support their preconceived notions about political and cultural agendas as they identify their favored type of earthly kingdom with our Lord’s heavenly reign.  Others try to use the Cross to justify their own religious or moral superiority over their family members, friends, or neighbors.  To do any of those things is to be ashamed of our Crucified Lord and His words because it is nothing short of blasphemous to corrupt the great sign of our salvation into an instrument for serving our self-centered desires for earthly glory. Quite to the contrary, our Lord’s Cross calls us to turn away from addiction to gratifying our passions as we offer ourselves in union with His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.     

In our epistle reading from Galatians, Saint Paul opposes fellow Jewish Christians who relied too much on their own ability to obey the Old Testament law and would have required the same of Gentile converts.  Refusing to trust in his own ability to obey religious rules, he writes that, “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.”  Paul took up his cross by enduring many struggles and difficulties out of faithfulness to the Lord, ultimately dying for him as a martyr.   He wrote to the Colossians that “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.” (Col. 1:24)

There is obviously nothing deficient in our Lord’s great Self-Offering.  All that is lacking is our taking up our own crosses in obedience to the Lord’s calling to deny ourselves and follow Him. Because of our own passions and the brokenness of our world of corruption, the struggle for faithfulness inevitably requires suffering, but not as though pain were somehow pleasing to God in and of itself.  Such suffering results from the inevitable tension we experience in embracing the struggle to offer ourselves fully to Christ. There is so much within each of us that does not want to do that. Truly taking up our crosses means fighting the difficult battle of confronting our own personal brokenness each day as we reject thoughts, feelings, and habits that would keep us focused on serving ourselves and the false gods of this world.  

  Christ prayed the night before His crucifixion, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) He ascended the Cross in free obedience, and no one forces us to take up our crosses either.  Many problems and pains come upon us without our asking for them in this life, even to the point of death, and it is so easy to refuse to suffer in a spiritually health way. As Job’s wife suggested, we can “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) in response to frustrations and disappointments.  We can refuse to offer our wounds to Christ for healing by ignoring them or convincing ourselves that we are still better off spiritually than the people we like to condemn.  Doing so will simply fuel our passions, blind us with spiritual pride, and corrupt our relationships with others.

Since freedom is an intrinsic dimension of being in God’s image, no one can make us take up our crosses. Only we can unite ourselves to Christ in His Great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world. Regardless of the circumstances, we have the freedom to refuse to fall into despair, for any instance of suffering provides an opportunity to purify the desires of our hearts as we learn to entrust ourselves more fully to the Lord.  Difficulties by their nature present challenges to which we may respond in a Christlike way or according to our passions.  He offered up Himself fully upon the Cross and refused to respond in kind to those who hated and rejected Him.  Likewise, we may unite ourselves to Him in every dimension and circumstance of our lives, including those in which we are sorely tempted not to respond as He did. Illness, broken relationships with others, worries about the future, regrets about the past, crushed hopes, and even the worst losses imaginable all present opportunities to grow in “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  Saint Paul wrote that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”  (Gal. 5:22-24)

Our self-centered and distorted desires usually rear their ugly heads quickly when we face trying circumstances.  If you are like me, you sometimes react like Jonah when the vine that gave him shade was eaten by a worm.  That was a very small thing, but Jonah became so angry that he literally wished he would die. (Jonah 4:5-11)   Other times we face circumstances so grave that must struggle mightily not to fall into despair about life itself.  Whether in matters small or great, none of us lacks the opportunity to take up our crosses daily as we struggle to find healing for our souls. 

Doing so usually does not require anything particularly dramatic or extraordinary.  It is normally a matter of focusing on the basic disciplines of the Christian life, such as refusing to accept sinful thoughts into our hearts, forgiving those who have wronged us, and trusting that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39) The more that we open our souls to the Lord’s healing strength through prayer, repentance, and serving our neighbors, the less time and energy we will have for stirring up and embracing the impassioned thoughts that lead to sinful actions.  The less that we cultivate worry, fear, and resentment, the more we will be able to pray to God from our hearts to grant what is best for all concerned in even the most broken circumstances of our lives. We must follow the Apostle’s teaching, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7) This is the path for gaining the strength to take up our crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Christ. 

To do so, we must choose to embrace the struggle of dying to our vain illusions about ourselves, other people, and our world.  Our hope is neither in perfection acquired by our own willpower nor in our ability to dominate anyone else, but in the gracious mercy of the One Who offered up Himself for our salvation purely out of love.  Through the Cross, He has brought life in the midst of death, light in the midst of darkness, and joy in the midst of despair.  We will receive His healing as we persistently offer ourselves to Him in humble faith, no matter what challenges, pains, or disappointments life may bring us.  That is how we may die to the corrupting power of sin and enter into the blessedness of His Kingdom.  The only way to truly elevate the Holy Cross is by denying ourselves and taking up our own crosses to follow the Savior each day of our lives.  That is how we show that we are not ashamed of Him and His Cross, which remains a weapon of peace, a trophy invincible, and the great sign of our salvation.

 

 

 

Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 1:18-24; John 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35

 

            We live in an age in which many people do not acknowledge that they are accountable to God or any standard of truth for their actions, especially in how they treat those they view as their enemies.  Dark passions of anger, hatred, and vengeance easily spread like a cancer in our souls when we accept no higher truth than our own desires.  Pontius Pilate said, “What is truth?”  in response to Christ saying His Kingdom is not of this world and that He came into the world in order to testify to the truth. (John 18: 36-38)  Since Pilate’s deepest desire was for his own position of power in the Roman Empire, he allowed the public execution of an innocent Man Whom he knew was no political threat to Rome when the leaders of the Jews shouted, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar…We have no king but Caesar.”

            Pilate and those who called for the Lord’s crucifixion were essentially nihilists who believed in nothing other than their own desire for power in this world.  John’s gospel describes the response of the Sadducees and Pharisees to the Lord’s raising of Lazarus in this way: “Here is this man performing many signs.  If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation. Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’” (Jn. 11:47-50) 

            Like crime bosses arranging to have someone murdered without bloodying their own hands, these men found a way to get the Roman Empire to do their killing for them.  They ironically presented themselves as being more loyal to Caesar than Pilate and publicly challenged him to prove his fidelity to Rome.  They had no principles at all other than their own immediate self-interest.  Pilate shrewdly reminded them of their subservient status by putting a sign on the Lord’s Cross that read “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek in order to make perfectly clear to everyone who really had the power in this situation.

            Those who think in such worldly terms wallow in a pit of despair and use their brutal domination of others to distract themselves from their own weakness before the grave as along as possible.  As we celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross today, we enter into the most foundational reality of the Christian faith:  namely, that through His Cross our Savior has conquered the power of death, emptied the tomb, and made us participants in His eternal life.  He has liberated us from slavery to the fear of death, which makes it possible for us to become radiant with His love, forgiveness, and service even of those we consider our enemies.  As He said from the Cross about those who rejected, condemned, and killed Him, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:34)

            Whether in first-century Palestine or in our own society today, the Cross of Christ appears foolish according to the ways of the world.  As St. Paul wrote, it is “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  The established religious and political powers of first-century Palestine did their best to destroy our Lord in the most public and humiliating way possible.  All that they accomplished, however, was to reveal their own impotence before a Kingdom that stands in judgement over all their vain attempts to find peace by dominating and destroying their enemies.  The great leaders and empires of history are dead and gone.  No matter what our opinions may be about politics and world affairs today, they will never bring healing to our souls.  The more we allow the projects of earthly factions to take root in our hearts, the harder it will be for us to take up our own crosses in learning to love those with whom we disagree.  

            This past week was the 24th anniversary of 9/11, an unspeakably tragic day of unimaginable violence that those old enough to remember will never forget.  In the aftermath of such barbarism, the passions of some led them to take vengeance on innocent people of Middle Eastern descent, including by burning The Orthodox Church of the Redeemer in California.  The gospel passage that survived the fire read, “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matt. 5:38-39)  When the priest from that parish visited the 9/11 Museum last year, he was shocked to find that the very same gospel passage had survived the destruction of St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, which was destroyed on that awful day.  It was fused to a piece of metal and opened to the identical words of our Lord.[1] 

 

            Apart from the Savior’s Cross and glorious resurrection, such teachings would probably strike us as beautiful ideals that are simply irrelevant for a world in which terrorists kill thousands, armies intentionally slaughter countless civilians, shooters regularly take the lives of school children, and assassins murder public figures.   As St. Paul taught, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins…If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:  17-19)   But because death could not hold captive the God-Man Who offered Himself for our liberation from corruption in all its forms, His Cross stands as the invincible trophy and weapon of peace through which the joy of eternal life has come to the world.  By ascending the Cross in free obedience, He revealed the power of sacrificial, forgiving love that empties the tombs, raises the dead, and brings us by grace into the communion of the Holy Trinity. That is why we elevate the Cross today as the great sign of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

 

As we celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross, let us examine ourselves to see if our lives appear foolish by the standards of the fallen world because of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Let us search our souls for signs that we view our neighbors and our world in light of the fear of death instead of in light of the Savior’s glorious resurrection.  Let us take up the cross of refusing to fill our eyes, ears, and minds with media that tempts us to hate, disregard, or refuse to forgive anyone who bears the image and likeness of God.  If such passions have taken root in our souls, we must pray, fast, give alms, and struggle to mindfully reject such thoughts and feelings so that we may become more personally receptive to the gracious divine energies of our Lord.

 

The challenge of living cruciform lives is surely great because nothing about the Cross makes sense according to conventional standards.  We simply cannot get around the truth that the Cross was and is a scandal in this world.  Humble self-sacrifice is not the path to power. Dying at the hands of enemies is not a sign of success.  Dead people do not rise up from their graves. Such apparent wisdom is revealed to be utter foolishness, however, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  As St. Paul taught, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”  The One Who reigns is not the person with the largest army, greatest amount of money, or the most political power.  The One Who reigns is “the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world.”    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Fr. Samer Youssef, “The Gospel in the Ashes,”  https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2564

Homily for the Sunday Before the Elevation of the Holy Cross and the Nativity of the Theotokos in the Orthodox Church

 

Galatians 6:11-18; John 3:13-17

It is easy to fall into despair when the deepest desires of our hearts go unfulfilled. When that happens, we suffer but also have an opportunity to learn to entrust ourselves to God in a way that is not focused simply on getting what we want.  In our pain and disappointment, we may learn to find joy as we receive unanticipated blessings that enable us to fulfill our distinctive vocations.  It is by embracing the struggle to take up our crosses in humble obedience in such circumstances that we become “a new creation” as those transformed personally by the gracious divine energies of our Lord.

The Savior’s grandparents Saints Joachim and Anna had despaired of fulfilling their role in the ongoing life of the Hebrew people due to their childlessness well into old age.  God heard their prayers, however, and miraculously blessed them to conceive a daughter, whom they offered to the Lord by taking her to live in the Temple as a three-year old. That is where she grew up in purity and prayer as she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord, the Theotokos who would contain the Son of God in her womb as His Virgin Mother.  Her parents had learned through decades of bitter disappointment that there was much more to life than getting what they wanted on their own timeline.  Through their patient endurance, they were prepared to receive the unlikely blessing of a daughter who would give birth to the Messiah.  That is how they fulfilled their unique role in the life of Israel in ways well beyond their own expectations.

Christ Himself fulfilled the hopes of the Hebrew people in a surprising fashion. In today’s epistle reading, St. Paul argues against fellow Christians of Jewish heritage who thought that Gentile converts had to be circumcised in obedience to the Old Testament law.  He rejected that practice, “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  As St. Paul taught, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3: 26-29) By conquering death through His Cross and resurrection, the Savior has opened the gates of Paradise to all who respond to Him with faith, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.  As He said to Nicodemus in today’s gospel reading, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”

Our Lord was lifted up upon the Cross because, contrary to the expectations of the Pharisees, even the strictest obedience to the Old Testament law could never have made us “a new creation.” The cycle of birth and the grave had reigned ever since the corruption of our first parents for those who had the law and for those who did not. The path out of slavery to corruption was not through obedience to religious rules, but in being healed by the gracious mercy of God, Who blessed an elderly, righteous Jewish couple with a long-awaited daughter named Mary.   She, in turn, received the unique blessing of becoming the Virgin Mother of the New Adam, Who would set right all that the first Adam had gotten wrong.  The Theotokos is the New Eve through whom Life came into the world.  Her birth foreshadows the coming of the Savior in Whom we are born again for the life the Kingdom.

In Christ’s conversation with the Pharisee Nicodemus, He spoke not of law, but of the life into which we enter by faith, saying that “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  He refers here to an event described in Numbers 21:8-9, when the Hebrews were saved from deadly snake bites when they looked at the bronze snake held up by Moses in the desert.  Christ does not describe Moses here in connection with the Ten Commandments, but instead as foretelling His victory over death through the Cross. Against those who trusted in their obedience to the law, St. Paul wrote, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”  Through His Cross, Christ has liberated us from obsession with self-justification so that we may become “a new creation,” being born again into the eternal life that He has brought to the world

In order to find the healing of our souls in Him, we must embrace the struggle to take up our crosses like Joachim and Anna, who bore the heavy cross of childlessness for decades.  When God miraculously blessed them with the conception and birth of a daughter, they offered her to grow up in the Temple.  After decades of faithfulness amidst disappointment, they knew that God’s blessing was not their private possession but a calling to offer even the greatest desire of their hearts to Him.  The Theotokos followed their example by bearing the unbelievably heavy cross of seeing her Son lifted up for the salvation of the world.  As St. Symeon prophetically told her, “a sword will pierce your own soul also.”  (Luke 2:35)

As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we reap the blessings of the faithful obedience of Joachim and Anna and of the Theotokos.  We must now take up our own crosses as we unite ourselves more fully to Christ in His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.  It is only by dying to our obsession with getting what we want from God on our terms that we will be able to know the joy of becoming His “new creation.”  We will condemn only ourselves if we celebrate the faithfulness of the Theotokos and her parents while not following their holy examples.  They did not try to use God to serve their agendas or justify themselves. They humbly entrusted themselves to Him in ways that required deep faith and personal sacrifice.  We must do the same as we endure the struggle to “seek first the Kingdom of God” with the assurance that He will grant what is best for us, our loved ones, and our world. (Matt. 6:33)  

We will remain enslaved to the corruption of the first Adam and Eve if we refuse to crucify the disordered desires and unholy habits that keep us wedded to the self-centered misery and despair from which Christ came to set us free.  The birth of the New Eve foreshadows our salvation in the New Adam through His Cross.  “For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”  Let us celebrate the Nativity of the Theotokos by freely taking up our crosses as we turn away from all that distracts us from entering into the great joy of the fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham to which the Savior has shockingly made us heirs by faith.   “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”  That is precisely who our Lord, the New Adam, calls us all to become as those transfigured personally by His grace.  

 

Forgiving Others as Christ Has Forgiven Us: Homily for the Eleventh Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Matthew 18:23-35

It is so easy to lose perspective on the circumstances of our lives and how we respond to them.  We are often so blinded by the limits of our perspective that we ignore the obvious and focus on matters of relatively little importance.  We fall prey to this temptation especially when our passions are inflamed to the point that we do not see ourselves or our neighbors clearly.  That is precisely what happened in the parable in today’s gospel reading.

The first servant begged for more time to pay an unbelievably large debt and his master responded with shocking mercy, forgiving the debt completely. But instead of sharing the mercy that he had received with a fellow servant who owed him much less, the man refused to show any compassion or patience at all.  He had the second servant put into prison until he could pay the full amount.  When the master heard what had happened, he had the first servant put in jail until he could repay the massive amount he owed.  Christ concludes the parable with these sobering words: “So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

This parable presents an uncomfortable truth:  How we treat those who have wronged or offended us reveals the true state of our souls.  Unlike those who understand the faith in legalistic terms, Orthodox Christianity teaches that our Lord’s healing mercy transforms us as persons in relation to one another:  If we have embraced His forgiveness, then His gracious divine energies must permeate our lives.  He said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”  To become radiant with mercy to the point we do not limit our love only to people who treat us well is necessary to obey Christ’s commandment: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5: 44-48)

If we dare to call upon God’s forgiveness for our sins, we will condemn ourselves as hypocrites if we refuse to forgive others.  He is infinitely holy and we are each the chief of sinners against the Father Who sent His Son for the salvation of the world. (Jn. 3:17)   As those who ask for mercy beyond what we could possibly deserve, how could we possibly be justified in refusing to forgive someone else?   The God-Man enables us to become like Him in holiness, and He forgave even those who rejected, betrayed, and killed Him.  Since Christ has identified Himself with even the lowliest people, how we treat those who have offended us is how we treat our Lord.  Everyone is a living icon of God. As St. John wrote, “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”   (1 Jn 4:20) When we refuse to forgive others, we show not only a lack of love for them, but also for the Savior.

Despite our best intentions, forgiveness of those who have wronged us deeply rarely comes quickly or easily.  Forgiveness is not simply a matter of what we say or how we act, but roots in our hearts, even as murder roots in anger and adultery roots in lust.  Christ calls us to share in His life so fully that we acquire the purity of heart that comes from the healing of the corruption that darkens our spiritual vision.    A necessary step in embracing that healing is to mindfully turn away from obsessing about the wrongs of others and holding grudges. We gain the strength to do so by opening our hearts to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul wrote, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal. 5:22-23) As St. Siluoan the Athonite taught, “One can only love one’s enemies through the grace of the Holy Spirit.” And “He who does not love his enemies, does not have God’s grace.”

How we respond to those who have wronged us reveals the true state of our souls in a way that goes beyond simplistic distortions of the Christian faith.  Regardless of our opinions about anything, how right we may be in any disagreement, or what warm feelings we may have about Christ, if we are so enslaved to the passions of pride and anger that we hate, condemn, and refuse to forgive anyone, then we reject our Lord because we refuse to embrace His gracious healing to the point that we conform our character to His.  We so easily become blind to the image of God in those we condemn or resent due to our own passions.  Doing so is nothing less than repeating Cain’s murder of Abel in our hearts.   Apart from the healing power of the Holy Spirit, there is simply no escape from slavery to an endless cycle of resentment and retribution that leads only to the grave.  We do not have to look very closely at our society and world to see the tragic results of living that way. 

The Savior endured the full consequences of such depravity in His crucifixion and death to lead us from the grave to the glory of the heavenly kingdom through His resurrection on the third day.  He abides in our hearts through the Holy Spirit through Whom we are able to cry out to God “Abba, Father,” for we are not slaves, but beloved children of God, heirs to all the promises to Abraham through faith in Christ. (Gal. 4:6) In order to receive His healing strength, we must open ourselves as fully as possible to the power of the Holy Spirit.   He is “everywhere present and fills all things” and we have received Him personally in the holy mystery of Chrismation.  In order to acquire the fruits of the Spirit, we must actively cooperate with God’s grace by struggling to grow in humility, which means learning to see ourselves as we truly are.  That is what the first servant in today’s parable obviously lacked.  When we know in our hearts that we are the chief of sinners and recognize that our very existence and all our blessings are dependent upon the undeserved mercy of the Lord, then we will no longer be driven to condemn anyone else.

Growing in humility is the only way for us to find healing for our passions, for our disordered desires ultimately root in the pride of refusing to see ourselves clearly.  To grow in humility, we must ask forgiveness of those we have wronged and quickly embrace the struggle to forgive those who have wronged us.  When the wrongs of others come to mind, we must pray for God to forgive our sins through their prayers and to grant what is best for them according to His love.  Instead of brooding over their offenses, we must mindfully turn the thoughts of our hearts to God through the Jesus Prayer as we ask for healing from all the ways that our sins have marred the beauty of our souls.

As in all things, we must be mindful, keeping a close watch on our thoughts and desires as we refuse to welcome into our hearts anything that would hinder our healing. The more that we acquire the humility to see ourselves as we truly are before the Lord, the more we will convey to others the same mercy that we have received from Him. To gain the spiritual strength to forgive others as we have been forgiven is not something that happens in an instant but is the fruit of the ongoing journey to embrace the healing power of the Holy Spirit.  No matter where we are on this path or how many times we stumble upon it, we must not despair but instead persist in fulfilling our high calling to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. 5: 44-45)   In Christ Jesus, our calling is nothing less than to love as God has loved us. 

 

 

True Faith Comes Through a Broken Heart: Homily for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost & Tenth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23 

            We do not have to look hard today to find distortions of the way of Christ that have nothing to do with humbling ourselves before the Lord as we take up our crosses to follow Him.  It is very dangerous to accept such corruptions of discipleship, for there is simply no way to unite ourselves to Him in faith and faithfulness without allowing our hearts to be broken. We continue today to celebrate the Dormition or “falling asleep” of the Theotokos, who after her death was the first to follow Him as a whole, embodied person into the Kingdom of Heaven.  St. Symeon said to the Theotokos at the presentation of the 40-day old Savior in the Temple, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (Lk. 2:35) We cannot begin to imagine the pain that she experienced as she saw her Son and God rejected and crucified before her own eyes.  She never abandoned Him and surely no one rejoiced at His resurrection as did His virgin mother.  

            Regardless of how young or old our children are, the hearts of parents will be broken for them time and time again.  The same is true of our relationships with our spouses and others with whom we are deeply united in love, for their sorrows become our own.  Most of us have to learn the hard way that those we love are free persons whom we must not attempt to control or make in our own image.  No one involved in such relationships is perfect and we must learn to bear the burdens that we present to one another patiently. 

The father of the epileptic boy in today’s gospel reading stands out as a shining example of how we may lift up our broken hearts for our loved ones to Christ in true humility. This poor man sorrowed over the sufferings of his son, whose seizures put his life at risk by causing him to fall into both fire and water.  He had asked the disciples to heal him, but they lacked the strength to do so.  The Lord spoke truthfully about the spiritual weakness of those who followed Him most closely: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”  Then He healed the young man.  The disciples, being unaware of why they were unable to be of help in this situation, asked the Lord about it.  His response must have been hard to hear: “Because you have no faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. This kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.” 

            As hard as it is for us understand, the attachment the disciples had to Christ at this point was not true faith in Him.  Since the Savior said that “This kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting,” they must have lacked even the most basic spiritual disciplines.  The passage ends with Christ foretelling His Passion: “The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will rise on the third day.”  All the gospels indicate that the disciples did not expect the Messiah to die and rise from the grave. They shared the dominant hope for a military champion to defeat the Roman forces of occupation and set up an earthly kingdom, in which they expected to have places of prominence.  Remember that the Lord said, “Get behind me, Satan!” to Peter, the head disciple, when he rejected the prediction of His cross and empty tomb. (Mk. 8:33) The hearts of the disciples would have to be broken through their denial and abandonment of the Savior Who went to the Cross for them finally to become receptive to a Messiah very different from what they had expected.

            St. Paul dealt with such distortions of the way of Christ in the church at Corinth where some built themselves up in their own minds in contrast to the humble obedience characteristic of true apostles.  In contrast to the pretensions of his opponents, Paul wrote that true apostles are fools for Christ, weak, held in disrepute, hungry, thirsty, homeless, and persecuted.  They were obviously not out for praise, glory, or self-satisfaction, but manifested in their sufferings the true way of the Lord as they blessed and forgave their tormentors.  That is why Paul could say with integrity, “be imitators of me.”  By enduring the pain and struggle of a heart broken for love of God and neighbor, he was healed of his passions and became a living icon of Christ.   

The heart of the father in today’s gospel lesson had already been broken by his recognition that he could not heal or protect his son from seizures that could cause his death.  Years of caring for the boy had revealed his own weaknesses and limitations.  The common hopes of parents to see their family lines flourish in future generations rang hollow for him now.  He struggled to think that he could keep his son from dying an untimely death and he was disappointed yet again when the disciples could not heal him.  In Mark’s account of this encounter, we learn that the “father cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ in response to the Savior’s words ‘If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.’ (Mk. 9:23-24) In the midst of this man’s brokenness and pain, he knew that his faith was far from perfect.  He had acquired the humility to see the weakness of his faith.  His heart would not be healed by pretending he was something he was not.  He cried honestly to the Lord from the depths of his soul and the Lord heard his plea.  

            As King David wrote in Psalm 50, “a contrite and humble heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Our hearts will become contrite and humble when we confront how we have marred the beauty of our souls and refused to fulfill our calling to become like God in holiness.  St. Mark the Ascetic wrote that “Remembrance of God is pain of the heart endured in the spirit of devotion.”  We will experience pain in our hearts when we persistently open even our deepest struggles and the darkest crevices of our souls to the healing of Christ. We will then know the infinite distance between the brilliant holiness to which we are called and the dark corruption that festers within us. Doing so requires mindfully dying daily to the slavery of our passions and reorienting the desires of our hearts for fulfillment in God.  We must pray, fast, serve our neighbors sacrificially, and otherwise do all that we have the strength to do in taking up our crosses if we are to follow the Theotokos in the eternal joy of the Kingdom.  

            Remember, however, that even the most conscientious performance of spiritual disciplines lacks the power, in and of itself, to bring healing to our hearts, to our loved ones, or our world.  Even as the Lord chided the disciples for their lack of faith, prayer, and fasting, He foretold His great Self-offering on the Cross and victory over death through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  He alone is the Savior, but we open ourselves to receive His healing by calling to Him in humility from the depths of our broken hearts.  They will be broken when we honestly engage the struggle to turn away from addiction to the self-centered desire that corrupts our relationships even with those we love most in this life.  It is only then that we will be able to say with the brokenhearted father, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”  It is only then that we will be able to entrust our hearts to Christ with integrity.  Otherwise, we will remain spiritual weaklings who are captive to our illusions of self-righteousness and our desires that our children, spouses, family members, and friends play the roles that we have assigned them.  If our hearts are not broken by the weight of our own sins and purified by suffering love for our neighbors, we will never gain the spiritual integrity of the father in today’s gospel reading.  But, thanks be to God, that is possible for us all, if we will only take up our crosses as best we can each day.  Doing so will break our hearts in many ways, but that is necessary if—like the Theotokos—we are to learn to entrust ourselves and all our relationships and attachments to Christ, Who taught that we must “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” (Matt. 6:33)   By enduring the struggle to focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God, we will open our hearts to receive the grace necessary to follow her into the blessedness of the eternal joy for which He created us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't Drown in a Sea of Despair: Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost & Ninth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 3:9-17: Matthew 14:22-34

It is so easy for us today to become so focused on our worries and fears that we start to sink into a deep sea of despair.  We live in a time of almost constant distraction in which we are bombarded with images and messages that make us anxious, angry, and depressed.  We have been formed to ground our sense of wellbeing in serving cultural standards of success, including what we possess, how we look, and whether national events are unfolding in ways that we like.  Even in the richest and most powerful country in the world, people who bear the image and likeness of God will never find true satisfaction in the pursuit of such insubstantial goals.  Even those who seem to have achieved them know that they can disappear in the blink of an eye.  If the horizons of our hope extend no further than that, then we will never have any true peace in our souls.  

 Today’s gospel lesson provides a vivid example of what happens when we attempt to ground ourselves on the weak foundation of such illusions.  St. Peter began to sink like a stone in a raging sea when he turned his focus away from the Lord to fear about where he stood in relation to the wind and the waves.  By his own nature, there was simply no way that Peter could have avoided drowning, but he called out “Lord, save me!”  That is precisely what the Savior did by reaching out to Peter and rescuing him as He said, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”  The stress of the storm revealed the weakness of Peter’s faith, which is not surprising because he had gotten himself into this situation by foolishly putting Christ to the test, saying “Lord, if it is You, bid me come to You on the water.”   By his lack of humble trust, Peter literally got himself in well over his head. He had to learn the hard way that he had no other foundation, no other basis or hope for his life, than Jesus Christ.  If left to his own devices, he would have sunk like a stone into a watery grave.    

That is a destination completely different from the one to which our Lord calls us. The God-Man came to do nothing less than to transfigure us in holiness with His gracious divine energies as the uniquely beautiful persons He created us to become.  The Savior called His disciples to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matt. 5:48) He cited the Psalms: “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.” (Psalm 82:6; Jn. 10:34) While we remain human beings by nature, Christ enables us to become like Him by our personal participation in His grace. That is why theosis is an eternal process, for God’s holiness is truly infinite.  We must not pretend to be isolated individuals looking for fulfillment in the conventional terms of this world, for Christ calls us to become persons united in love with Him and fellow members His Body, the Church. Such uniting love should transform our relationships with everyone we encounter and overcome all merely human divisions that do nothing but enslave people even further to their passions.  We become more fully our true selves not in self-centered isolation or by identifying with divisive factions over against other groups, but through growing in loving relationship with all who bear His image and likeness.  

The contrast between humanity seeking fulfillment on its own terms and our Savior’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person is starker than the difference between night and day.  It is truly the difference been death and life, between sinking to the bottom of a dark sea of sin and becoming resplendent with the radiant glory of God. Our Lord has conquered death, Hades, and the tomb in His glorious resurrection on the third day.  His divine glory has flooded even the darkest abyss, even the most tragic and painful pits of despair into which we can fall.  He has liberated us from slavery to the fear of death as the God-Man Who shares His eternal life with weak, fearful, anxious, and confused people like us.  When we call out to Him with faith from the depths of our hearts, as Peter did when he began to sink, He will illumine our darkened souls to receive His healing light.   

As St. Paul taught, “no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  No one and nothing else can have that place in our lives, for to ground our existence elsewhere is to commit idolatry.  No matter how virtuous or appealing any project or ideal of this world may appear, it cannot keep us from sinking under the weight of our own sins.  The darkness roots so deeply within us all, both personally and collectively, and nothing but the brilliant glory of the Lord can overcome it.  Whether we know it or not, we inevitably sink like stones into the abyss whenever we make the foundation of our lives anything or anyone else than the One Who has conquered death itself.  All good things have their place in God’s creation and we should despise none of them, but we will not fully embrace the healing of the New Adam until we ground every dimension of our life on Him, our one true foundation. 

 As St. Paul teaches, we are by no means self-made, self-sustaining, or self-defining.   Our true identity is not determined by any merely human accomplishment, ability, or affiliation.   Instead, “we are God’s fellow workers…God’s field, God’s building…God’s temple… God’s Spirit dwells in you.”  Christ has made us members of His own Body, the Church.  The very foundation of our life, of our identity, and of our hope is in Him, not in our achievements, possessions, characteristics, or inclinations.   In order to avoid sinking like stones amidst the raging seas of our passions, we must mindfully turn away from whatever tempts us to reject our true vocation to become ever more beautiful living icons of God.  If we surrender to those temptations, we will become just like Peter in being so overwhelmed by the wind and waves of worry and fear that we will turn our focus away from Christ.

 Let us, then, remain constantly on guard against the temptation to entrust the meaning and purpose of our lives to anything or anyone other than the Lord.  There is no way to do that without cultivating the habits of daily prayer and mindful protection of our hearts from embracing thoughts and desires that fuel our passions.  The next time that you start sinking in the winds and waves, focus your attention on Him, as Peter did, saying “Lord, save me!”  He alone can raise us up from drowning in the sea of our passions. We also must not pretend that we are so strong spiritually than we can simply wait until there is a crisis; no, we must attend to the health of our souls every day.  We all remain too weak before our passions to focus fully on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God.

 That is why we should all take a close look at our lives during this Dormition Fast and identify the habits of thought, word, and deed that keep us so distracted, confused, and weak that we easily sink like stones under their weight. We need to build new habits to replace them, such as limiting our exposure to images, messages, and media that lead us to hope in the passing things of this world.  We should replace them with edifying spiritual reading and listening to Orthodox chant and spiritual commentary.  Instead of worrying about this or that in the future or despairing about matters beyond our control in the world, we should devote our attention to grounding ourselves on Christ in the present and to serving Him in our neighbors who need our assistance and companionship. 

            The path to transfiguration in holiness is open to us all and exemplified most fully by the Theotokos, the woman who was the first receive Christ as His virgin mother and then to follow Him as a whole, embodied person into the heavenly kingdom upon her death.  As we fast and ask for her prayers, let us entrust ourselves so fully to her Son that we may join her in saying with every ounce of our being, “Behold the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  If we remain so grounded on our one true foundation, we will never drown in the sea of despair.   

 

 

 

Preparing for the Transfiguration and the Dormition: Homily for the Eighth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

 Matthew 14:14-22

            Early August is an especially rich time in the life of the Church.  On August 6, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor, when the spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold His divine glory to the extent possible for human beings.  For the first two weeks of this month, we fast and pray in preparation for the Feast of the Dormition (or “falling asleep”) of the Theotokos, when she became the first to follow her Son—body, soul, and spirit-- into the eternal life of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Both these great feasts manifest our sublime vocation as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  As Christ said to Nathanael, “You shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” (John 1:51)

In order to become transfigured in holiness, we must respond with active obedience to the Savior’s calling in our lives.  Of course, we would usually rather avoid accepting that responsibility like the disciples did when the Lord said concerning the thousands of hungry people who had followed Him into the wilderness, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Since it was obvious that they did not have the provisions to feed all those people, they had asked Christ to “send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”  The disciples had only five loaves of bread and two fish, an absurdly small amount of food for a large crowd.  But they still obeyed when “He said, ‘Bring them here to Me.’”  The Savior then “blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  And they all ate and were satisfied.  And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.  And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

             The Lord revealed His identity as the Messiah that day by miraculously supplying food for hungry Jews in the desert like manna from heaven in the Old Testament.  The five loaves remind us of the five books of law in the Hebrew Bible, while the two fish recall the two tablets of God’s commandments received by Moses.  From these small amounts of food came such an abundance that twelve basketsful were leftover, which reminds us of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Five thousand men and their families were fed, which again recalls the five Old Testament books of law. The Lord miraculously satisfied the hunger of a multitude in a way that showed He fulfills the law, the prophets, and the promises to Abraham, which are now extended to all who respond to Him with humble faith. (Matt. 5:17)   

     Christ showed the disciples and us that we must actively offer ourselves and our resources to become instruments of His salvation in this world, regardless of our weaknesses and inadequacies.  Adam and Eve did the opposite by disobeying the Lord’s command and indulging their self-centered desires. They thus refused to fulfill their vocations as living icons of God and pursued a path leading only to despair and death.  The Savior offered Himself on the Cross in order to liberate us from such a depraved state through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  We unite ourselves to His offering when we lift up our hearts and offer bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy.  He has restored and fulfilled the original purpose of food and drink in order to bring us into the eternal communion of love shared by the Persons of the Holy Trinity. He nourishes us with His Body and Blood such that His life becomes ours as participants in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.  

When “He looked up to Heaven, and blessed, and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,” the Savior provided an image of the Eucharist.  Had the disciples not offered what little food they had collected to Christ, the crowd would have gone hungry.  If no one offers the bread and wine for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, no one is nourished by the Eucharist.  By miraculously satisfying so many with so little, Christ revealed what it means for us to live eucharistically as we offer ourselves and our resources for the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for the world.  We must not offer only bread and wine or think that communion with Christ concerns only what we do on Sunday morning.  To be truly in communion with Christ means living every day as those who share in His life and are being transfigured in holiness.  No matter how tiny or inadequate our offerings may seem, He multiplies them to accomplish His gracious purposes for the world.   

During this period of the Dormition Fast, we marvel at how an obscure Palestinian Jewish girl freely offered herself to become the living temple of God when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  By offering herself fully in obedience, she became the Theotokos, the first to receive Christ into her life and, upon her death, the first to follow Him as a whole, embodied person into the heavenly kingdom.  No one forced her to do so, even as her Son did not force the disciples and does not force us.  Her obedience was not limited to a one-time event but continued throughout the course of her life, including when she stood by the foot of the Cross as her Son died.  Likewise, the disciples’ offering was not limited to the small amount of food they handed over on one day, for they had already obeyed His command to leave behind their occupations and families to follow Christ.  Had they refused to abandon their fishing nets, Peter, James, and John would not have been on Mt. Tabor where they beheld the divine glory of the Lord at the Transfiguration.  The only way to participate in Christ’s transfiguration of the human person in holiness is to persist in offering ourselves to Him in obedience each day as best we can, no matter how insignificant or difficult the particular offering may seem.  

            In order to gain the spiritual strength to do so, we must be obedient in the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, including opening our hearts to God in focused prayer and reading the Scriptures each day, keeping a close watch on the thoughts that we accept in our hearts, and fasting in ways appropriate to our health and life circumstances. We must struggle to forgive those who have wronged us, ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, and give generously to help the needy and support the ministries of the Church.  We must repent of our sins as we receive Christ’s forgiveness in Confession, which we should all do regularly.  And we should receive our Lord’s Body and Blood as often as we can with proper spiritual preparation. 

That is how we may become transfigured in holiness so that we will have the strength to obey His command: “You give them something to eat.”  That is not a calling for a select few, but the Lord’s calling to us all.  In ways beyond our full understanding, the free obedience of an obscure Jewish girl was necessary for the coming of the Messiah.  In her Dormition and translation to heaven, the Lord has given us a radiant sign of our salvation.  We must each bow before the mystery of how her obedience, and ours, plays a unique role in making the world brilliant with the Lord’s holiness and drawing others into the life of the kingdom.  Let us refuse to be distracted from fulfilling our vocation to be transfigured in holiness as we offer the loaves and fishes of our lives for Him to bless and multiply as He sees fit. Let us “lift up our hearts” as we offer every dimension of our life and world for the healing and fulfillment that He alone can bring.